Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1887-01-20
PICTURE OF THE CAR.
AND A DESCRIPTION OF THE LIFE
WHICH He LEADS.

How the Autocrat is Obliged to Travel.
A Monarch with Many Flatterers but
no Friends-Living in Nightmare of
Terror.
Ny friend the messenger was on his way
70 ST. Petersburg in the autumn of last
year, when his train stopped at q small
Russian way station and was shunted off
1pon a side track. The station yard was
illed with soldiers, fling of into lines
along the main track.
The messenger let down his window and
put out his head to discover the cause of the
ielay A soldier said something to him in
Russian, then pointed his gun at his head.
A travelling companion pulled the messen-
ger back, saying: ''You don't understand
Russian, eh; That man told you that if you
1idnt shut the window and pull down the
curtain he would blow your brains out"
Naturally the window came up and the
curtain came down. They sat thus in the
darkened compartment for quarter of an
hour. Then, with q prodigious rattle and
roar, there flashed by them on the main
track short express train. Twenty min
utes more another rushed past in the same
direction. Then, after some minutes, the
soldier shouted to them that they might lift
the blind, and they resumed their journey.
Inquiry revealed that the car had passed
them on his way to the Skierniwice meet
ing, and that these precautions were ordered
all along the line. No one knew which Of
the trains bore him.
A PICTURE OF THE GEAR.
The car himself seems to have many fat
terers, but no friends. l have talked, l
daresay, at one time or another, with a
score of people who have met him and are
fairly qualified TO judge what manner Of
man he is. Almost invariably he is de-
scribed as big, burly, bearish sort Of man,
strangely unlike any of his moro recent
ancestors on either side, and with face of
a curious Teuton-Tartar type, picturesque
but unpleasant He has vast physical
strength, of the blacksmith sert, and has
the kind of mind which not infrequently
goes with that order of body--slow, honest
obstinate, confdfng where faith is reposed,
suspicious everywhere else. In, a way
George III must have been Of the same
nature. He was, with Louis XVI, rather
contemptuously celebrated by his contem-
porary critics as one Of the two faithful
husbands among the sovereigns Of Europa
Good husbands seem to make bad kings.
The present car is said to be most de-
voted and single minded spouse-the fhgt
of his race. He is par excellence family
man, to whom the highest happiness would
be the home circle, if he were allowed to
have a home His tastes are simple; he
eats plainly and heavily; before the burde,
of empire came upon him he used to be
great sleeper, a mighty hunter, a bluff
friend of the few he liked, hater Of for
malities, diplomacy, and politics generally
in short, good, wholesome, rough plebe-
ian prince, stupid and oholeric but honest
and true. Fate never played on mortal a
crueler trick than when she suddenly
hurled upon this man the load Of csarship.
To be absolute master of over 100, 600, 900
of human beings is in itself task of incon-
ceivable magnitude. When, further, the
task is complicated by organized robbery
among officials and organized murder
among subjects, by continual necessity Of
provoking war by aggression abroad and
ceaseless terror of assassination at home
it becomes simply impossible.
& LIFE OF TERROR.
A less stubborn and less conscientious man
than the car would have cut his throat long
ago under the frightful load imposed upon
him. He suffers and sticks to his post.
He does no good to himself or anyboey else.
His wife is pale specter Of her former self,
looking old enough to be the mother of her
older, but marvelously preserved, sister, the
Princess of Wales, worn and gray-haired
with her life of fright. Their eldest son,
the cEarowitz, boy Of 18, is in decline
from which there is little hope OF recovery
.-simply terrified out OF his life But the
czar still manfully tries to be ear. The
task is beyond him. If there could be
man made up of Bismarck, Washington,
Richelieu, Bonaparte and Tamerlane put
on the Russian throne, perhaps he could
hold his place and compel success.
The present car lives in the dazed night
mare of terror which paralyzes a prisoner
under indefinite sentence of death. Any
moment the messenger of the ak may ap-
pear. He cannot sleep; when he eats, it is
as an animal, not as the master of the worlds
costliest cuisine. He tries to work, with
out understanding the things he does or
caring for them. He looks into every
mans face for sign of murderous knowl-
edge He trusts nothing-nobody. The
gulf between what he is and what he Is
supposed to be is SO abysnal-the joke of
being at once the most powerful man on
earth and the poorest hunted slave in exist
ence is so grimly horrible-that he becomes
a mailman almost in the sffort to compre-
hend the two extremes. The longing to as
sert himself to put to the test his autoc-
racy, drives him to wild and foolish meas
ures His whole course toward his hated
cousin, the Battenberg, and the Bulgarians
has been that of a crazy man. People who
know Russia best expect that his brain will
give way under the strain long before We
have heard the last Of the Bulgarian ques-
tion.-London Cor New York Times.